Phat Lewts' Gold Blog | Free World of Warcraft Gold Making Guide

My 5.3 Preparations

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:12:00 +0000

Since 5.3 is dropping tomorrow I just figured that it's finally time to actually answer the question I've been putting off for weeks (not that I have a complex response, sorry), "What are you doing to prepare for 5.3?" as well as "What are you stockpiling for 5.3?"

Nothing.

Okay I'm not doing "Nothing" per say, but I'm not stockpiling, nor am I doing anything super secret or innovative in preparation for patch day tomorrow. I'm crafting ahead of time, at least a full stack of each cut of gem, especially the PvP related ones, as well as 1 of every Crafted Dreadful piece, enchants, belt buckles, the usual, nothing out of the ordinary. As with any other major patch, more players will be coming to the game, more people will be getting gear, and more people will be buying enhancements for their items.

The one thing I am doing that may be (but probably isn't) slightly innovative is crafting some epic WotLK PvP cuts. Who knows how these upcoming PvP changes will effect the 70s bracket, but I know regardless the gems will sell, just hoping they sell at a faster rate after the patch drops.

That's really it. Just prepping as if it were any other patch, doing the basics. Will be very interesting to see how the economy changes, but I'm honestly mostly interested in playing through the new story line for the first time. Hope you all have a great patch day, and if you're doing something special for the patch, feel free to leave it in the comments!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts
If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold

Enigma Seed Herb Rates

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:06:00 +0000

Over the past few months I've been keeping track of the rates of herbs of Enigma Seeds I've been planting on my main. Today I'm going to share that data with you, as I figured my readers might find it useful, but please take it with a grain of salt. These aren't guaranteed rates, but just my personal data, that I'm using to approximate how much the 5 minutes of planting and tending to crops is worth to me.

Golden Lotus

I've been tracking Golden Lotus for longer than the complete set of herbs, so I've made it it's own separate table. I started recording data in Patch 5.1, and have separated the data because I've found the disparity in averages to be notable, although it does not necessarily imply that the rate was actually changed from 5.1 to 5.2. Also, all data today is based on planting 16 plots of Enigma Seeds per day.

Patch	Total Golden Lotus	Days Recorded	Average per Day
5.1	190	42	4.524
5.2	181	34	5.324
Total	371	76	4.882

Remaining Herbs

I started recording the other herbs when I realized that the value of these herbs was not quite negligable, and I was curious as to what their drop rate was. I've only been recording this set for 25 days, so again not the greatest sample size, but the variation per day is small enough that I thought it would be good to share. I will probably update these at some point in the future, but here's what I've gotten as an average so far.

Herb	Rain Poppy	Green Tea Leaf	Silkweed	Snow Lily	Fool's Cap
Per Day	6.56	4.8	5.88	6.92	7.84

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you enjoy my blog follow me on Twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 5/15 - Guild Bank Purchasing Bonanza

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:46:00 +0000

My weekly review is a day late, but as of yesterday I was up 50k on the week, pushing my grand total above 2.5 million liquid gold! It was a relatively boring week in gold making, but yesterday I purchased a guild bank which distracted me to the point of not getting my weekly review out, and I thought it would be pretty interesting to have as the main focus.

Guild Bank Shenanigans

Yes, shenanigans. So yesterday while milling some herbs on my scribe I notice in trade chat that someone is selling a level 24 guild with 5 tabs, and the stuff in the tabs. Whenever I see something like this, I log right off, and hop on my unguilded toon to check out their guild banks to see if I can get a good deal. So I whispered the guy, and I was the first one to bite (also keep in mind that this all worked out a lot better than it normally does). I got an invite to the guild and asked for full permission to see the tabs, and he obliged. I then used Sapu's amazing macro from The Consortium forums to approximately value the guild bank. 11.3k, not too shabby. I did a few things that I also read on this guild bank purchasing thread on The Consortium, such as finding out his motivation for selling it (he was transferring servers with friends, and it seemed legit as he was only one left in the once active guild), and finding out how much he wanted for it before making an offer.

He told me he wanted 15k. Yes, 15k for a level 24 guild with roughly 11k of mats in it, but of course, I did not offer 15k. I responded with "There's not much of value in the guild bank how does 10k sound?" He said that's good. I took one last piece of advice I learned from that thread, asking him if he would be willing to do half before and half after he transfered GM to me. Not that it was some huge sum of gold I would mind losing, but he also agreed to this, and traded me the guild. After sorting out all the tabs, getting vendor trash vendored, 24 hours of auctions, and CoDing mats at the cost I'd pay for them to my relevant alts, I now have 6k liquid on the alt, and about 7k in auctions, half of which are useful, and the other half are things I'm hoping will sell in a few postings.

So I'm only down 4k liquid gold for the guild at the moment, and I'm going to flip it pretty soon, my main decision being whether or not to get it to 25 before selling it (it's half way already). More to come on that as it unfolds.

Other Flipping

I actually flipped another item this week that's of note, just because I think that it's an interesting aside. I got an in game mail from someone asking for a 476 piece I had on the AH for 5k (it was posted at 10k). This actually sounded like a nice deal because I had it up for a while, and who knows how long they will even be in demand for with 5.3 inching it's way around the corner. Being who I am though, I decided to test the waters. I mailed him back saying "Really sorry, but I'm not willing to go any lower than 6,500" and attached them C.O.D. for 6500g. What do you think happened?

Screenshots of the Week

Got a few screenshots this week of people being silly, or odd sales in WoW.

The first, a strange sale, 3x Enchanting Vellum, you won't believe the price. It got accidentally thrown into a group I made when I used the word Enchant to move items into it, needless to say it's staying.

The next one is an odd interaction I had with someone from my transmog toon this past week, the item in question is this.

Last but not least, someone demonstrates a great way to convince me not to sell him something.

That's all for this week, hope you enjoyed my off topic weekly review!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

It's Not Profitable on my Server

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:44:00 +0000

Today I'm going to write about one of the most common and equally most illogical arguments I see from people either new to gold making or new to a particular market - "It's not profitable on my server".

Reasoning
I honestly wish that people would just stop and think about what they're saying for a moment before making such a daft claim. This is the assumption you're making about the seller when you say a market is not profitable on your server: the guy selling it is spending his own time to craft this plethora of items, all solely for the joy of losing gold. As the saying goes "There's a method in the madness." Just because you don't know how the market is profitable on your server does not mean that it isn't.

Research
Zerohour touched on this in his most recent post (which is well worth the read), one of the most important and useful aspects to gold making is digging your heels in and actually learning for yourself about how something works. If prices are lower than your calculated thresholds for a certain profession or flipping market, take a moment and check out The Undermine Journal's page for the base item(s), or the profession page. Check out the fluctuations in price, know when mats are cheapest, and better yet, set up market notifications! Both TUJ and Wowuction have email alerts, and utilizing these properly can be key to maximizing your profit potential.

If you are new to a market don't just assume it's some easy to master beast and that you understand all the aspects of it. Read about the topic, learn about how other's maximize their profits, and figure you what you're doing wrong. Find the happy medium that is your own personal method, and master it.

Dominating Markets
Once you've figured out how to craft at a profitable price, only half the battle is won. I misleadingly named this section, because your goal is not to dominate the market, your goal is to partake in the market, and make sales, but don't have it in your mind that you need to be the cheapest all the time. People could spend their lives in so called "undercutting wars" and not be a penny richer (in fact would probably be quite a few gold poorer) for it. Post heavily on days that mater, reset days (Tuesdays or Wednesdays for US/EU) and the weekend. These days see the biggest influx of player purchasing, and should see the greatest influx of your own crafted goods if at all possible. Don't worry about dominating the market on a Monday afternoon, it's just not worth it compared to high volume days. Save your reposting for high sale days as opposed to a pissing contest between you and your main competition.

Conclusion
Again let me reiterate, just because you don't know how a market is profitable, doesn't mean that it is not. Do the legwork specific to your server, and you'll find that you will be able to make much more gold in the long run.

This week I was able to catch up on some gold making podcasts, and I have some recommendations for anyone who is interested. Eviscerated had two great guest spots in the past weeks with Zerohour and Wowprofitz, be sure to give them a listen if you have the time, they're great interviews. Also, GoblinRaset came out with a 2nd episode of the Happy Hour Roundtable Podcast, which can be found here. I enjoy listening to these guys weekly, and I hope you do too.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 5/8

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:06:00 +0000

Getting this one out a day late, but numbers reflect the week ending on 5/8.

Another week another...42k. A mediocre showing, putting me just short of 2.5 million liquid, but considering the level of crafting I did this week and the weeks previous, I'd expect more, but I'll get into that.

Breakdown of Incomes
Below I'm going to do a rough breakdown to give you an idea of where I made the most gold this week. The highest income comes from my main which is not only a function of how much they sell but how many times per day I am able to post auctions (usually post max of once/day from other alts).

Gems/Leg & Shoulder Enchants/Tailoring PvP gear- 37k
DMF Trinkets - 16k
Alliance Flipping - 8k
Horde Flipping - 8k
Enchants - 6.5k
Glyphs - 4k
BS PvP Gear - 3k
Engineering Products - 1.4k

Slumps and Ruts
Based on my numbers, and other's tales of current gold making, it feels as if we've all hit that "end of patch slump". That time in the patch where less people are playing (approximately 14% less), less people are getting new gear, and sales dive a bit. I think that it's majorly the reason why my sales numbers are low, but for me it's even worse because I get in a rut when I don't make sales. For me low sales translate into low motive for posting, which translate into less postings and even lower sales. It's a vicious cycle! Regardless, I've still been posting from my main a lot to make up for the lack of reposting on my alts. I'm hoping for 5.3 soon, and that it revitalizes the market. Only time will tell.

Facepalm of the Week
Today's facepalm of the week is brought to you by Cataclysm Epic Gems. For all your out of date gemming needs, pick Cataclysm Epic Gems!

That's all for this week, keeping it short and sweet.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Finding your Gold Making Niche

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Fri, 03 May 2013 14:54:00 +0000

So during GoblinRaset's Roundtable Podcast that I recently participated in, we talked about our favorite "Niche Markets", and today I wanted to write about a similar topic, finding your own niche within the gold making World (of Warcraft).

Be sure to check out the episode of The Drunken Mogul's Happy Hour Podcast Episode 1 here.

Finding Your Niche
If you've listened to the show, or when you do (*nudge nudge*), you'll notice that we don't all have the same methods to making gold. Erogroth for example tends to focus almost exclusively on flipping markets, with a bit of professions mixed in. Others tend to do a bit of everything, like Jim Younkin or myself. Profitz on the other hand likes flipping greens while learning markets such as JC, Tailoring, and Engineering. Finally, there are others like Thairus who excel in markets most of us avoid, like Engineering.

The point is that everyone in the above examples has a different spread of combos of professions and flipping that they use, but they all make gold efficiently. Is there an optimal spread? Yes I do believe that there technically is, but that it varies based on server, and more importantly the individual. Everyone has different time constraints and interests within the game, and your job is to find your best fit in the gold making world, your own niche.

One Man's Trash
Just because your favorite blogger doesn't like selling glyphs, doesn't mean that glyphs aren't a great way to make gold if attacked from the correct direction, take this post for example. Try out markets, and stick to the things you enjoy, and work well for you on your server. Take everything with a grain of salt, and trust your own results first and foremost. Blogs and websites have tons of useful information on making gold, in fact I'd imagine just about every legitimate method of making gold in World of Warcraft has been discussed at length somewhere already. The value (in my eyes at least) from reading everyone's different perspectives, is that you can get a sense of what works and what doesn't, and evolve your own gold making method as a hybrid of those that work. Take my enormous transmog list for example. You don't need to use such an enormous list to have success flipping transmog, but it's what I do, and it works for me. There are honestly items you could cut out of that list, and refine it to your own needs, or you could find another list, from someone who already has refined their method.

A Niche Market
Talking about finding your gold making niche, I can't not include a niche within a market, so let me refer you to my past post on Icy Cloak. Since the initial post I've sold roughly 7 of them, making it well worth the time it took to camp the recipe and craft it. Below is my priest modeling the cloak. A similar model can be obtained with JP, but people just don't take the time to do their research!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you enjoy my blog be sure to follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 5/1

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Wed, 01 May 2013 19:37:00 +0000

This week's review is going to be relatively short, not a very eventful week. I once again slacked on restocking my crafting professions, and I am only up 31k on the week, mostly because I've spent time gearing my newly 90 Disc Priest with my time in game, which I have enjoyed thus far. I guess the healer queues make it a bit less painless, and I still feel like a dps with Atonement. Below is the highlight reel of things I did this week in game related to gold making.

Investing in the Alliance
I spent a lot of gold on my Alliance toon this week. The character is at 78 and I started getting the mats for leveling professions to 600 once I get 80 (more professions to neglect!). I also bought that alt 280% flying, because the Outland speed is just a bit too slow for my taste, time is money, long term investment yadda yadda. I also invested roughly 10k into blues in the twink market this week, which all should flip relatively quickly. I'm down roughly 8k for the week on the Alliance side, but I'm sure to make that up within the next week.

Transmog Confusion of the Week
I post transmog on 2 different servers, controlling 3 factions worth of transmog markets, so I tend to get whispers, especially when I speak up in trade. Well someone on my alt realm started barking Cardinal Ruby in trade for 1k gold each, I couldn't help but let people know that they're purchasable for 220 JP as well as in the AH for under 100g, and I got this as a response from a different toon in trade:

At the time I was reposting my transmog, and I didn't see the guy's name once, so I can't imagine he was remotely buying any decently selling items. It astounds me how little research some people do before "diving" into these markets.

You Scratch My Back...
Last but not least I wanted to mention something that I did this week as a favor to one of my suppliers, which I think is great for what I'm going to call "supplier morale". I look for suppliers from my bank toon, the one that deals in and is known for transmog and leveling gear. One of my current suppliers of Ghost Iron asked me if I had a certain piece for transmog, and I did not, so I told him I'd keep an eye on it on both the Horde & Alliance sides of the AH, and I set up a wowuction.com email alert specifically for the item. Two days after I set it up I got the email saying it was on the Alli side, and I snatched it up, and my supplier was ecstatic as he had been trying to farm the green for a while. He sent me a few stacks on the house (for a 35g investment on a piece of gear). Happy suppliers = easy gold making.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Thoughts on Pricing ilevel 502 Reborn Weapons

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:09:00 +0000

Blacksmiths have had time to get their 30 Lightning Steel Ingot, and the 502 Reborn Weapons have finally started to hit the market (I'm still 1 CD short). If you're unfamiliar with them, check out this past post I did on them. The big question on everyone's mind (at least everyone with a Blacksmith) is "what kind of price can I actually get for these?" Right now the weapons are hovering around 70k average across servers according to TUJ, which in my opinion is a bit higher than most people will be willing purchase it for. Let's take a look at some of the facts.

Know Your Market
The person purchasing this weapon is purchasing it for one of two reasons. Either they want the ilevel boost on an alt, or they want to use it for transmog, simple as that. Most mains have been in ToT on LFR for at least a few weeks now, and probably already have (at least) 502 weapons. Aside from those with absolutely disposable income, most people won't pay 70k for such an item. Let's be reasonable, for that price if they wanted it that much, it would have been cheaper to level a Blacksmith for the cooldowns and make it themselves, drop Blacksmithing, then relevel their old profession to max again.

Estimating Cost
I crunched a few numbers, and I came up with a minimum bound on the cost of these items, and I just want to share with you my methodology first. The weapons have 3 base components, 300x http://www.wowhead.com/item=72096/ghost-iron-bar, varying numbers of http://www.wowhead.com/item=72104, and 18x http://www.wowhead.com/item=76061. For my analysis I chose to value each item at their current "market price" as if you were buying them off the Auction House (the price you could have gotten for them had you not used them to craft the weapon). For SoH I used the value of 2x http://www.wowhead.com/item=72238/golden-lotus as the floor price of SoH (they are most likely valued at more, but I wanted a MINIMUM). Below are the base prices followed by the price to craft the final i502 version of each weapon.

Weapon	Approx Crafting Price
wowhead.com/item=94579	10,128 g
wowhead.com/item=94585	11,069 g
wowhead.com/item=94591	10,128 g
wowhead.com/item=94586	12,010 g
wowhead.com/item=94580	12,915 g
wowhead.com/item=94592	12,915 g

As you can see this minimum varies from 10-13k for the weapon, plus value of the 30 days worth of cooldowns it takes to craft the weapon. These are the floor on the approximate price, making the assumptions stated above.

Okay Phat, Get to the Point!
That being said, the price range I'd expect for these to actually sell for on most servers is between 30k-55k depending on competition and demand. If you haven't crafted it yet, start barking your CD in trade chat. Have links ready for all the models, and say you'll craft any for a set price. I'm aiming for 50k myself. Going to craft one though, http://www.wowhead.com/item=94580, that my DK could use if it doesn't sell, and post it for ~2 weeks then use if it hasn't sold. This is mostly because I want to get a nice 2H weapon for my alt Blood DK and I need an excuse to use it instead of sell it, I'd highly suggest selling the weapon in trade, you can use the wowhead links above to link them in game. Are you going to use your CD or sell it, and if you're going to sell it, how much are you aiming for?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 4/24

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:58:00 +0000

So at the end of this week I'm at a liquid total of 2,416,845g, an increase of 83k!

Inspiration from Stupidity
So I did something incredibly stupid this week, and I mean legendarily dumb. I was going to post my lists for organizing the rare cut gems by a common search term, and wanted to try to go through the process on a fresh shopping list. You can probably see where this is going. So long story short I found myself having to remake my posting lists from scratch (yes I know the TSM Application has a backup function, mine wasn't setup correctly). So I did and was able to get about 99% of my things back into their respective groups pretty fast, the biggest pain being the transmog gear, but I'm at the point where I can tell if it's good by the name, not just the hover over from Mogit now, so that helped (I've already found a few things mispriced).

Reworking TSM
That being said, I have decided to rework the prices on some of my transmog gear. I had been posting at a minimum of 750g, and honestly that's just way too much at this point in the game. When gear was flying off the shelves in 4.3-5.0 it was fine, but now I have adjusted my groups to more reasonable prices, hoping for more turnover, and higher profits, but only time will tell!

Updates from Last Week
Last week I mentioned that was definitely going to set up my Blacksmith's crafting to craft the 458 pieces, and believe it or not I actually did! I crafted the 20someodd pieces that I could, and I've sold 3 for an average of 500g/piece which is not too shabby! I actually used a few pieces on my DK to catch up on gearing, and up my ilvl as well (had greens).

On the other hand I haven't tried to continue to craft and post Meta gems uncut in stacks of 20, I just haven't had the material resources to do so in game at the prices I want them at. I would really like to replicate my results in the future though, and this is on my to-do list.

30 Days.
Recently both through conversations on twitter and on the subreddit WoWEconomy have got me wondering how much gold I could make in 30 days on a new server, investing relatively little time into it. I'm seriously considering undertaking this challenge, but I haven't made a final decision on it yet. I'm also considering running 2 methods concurrently, one leveling a dk to 80 and using professions while flipping, the other using a level 1 to only flip auctions and see who has the most gold, and who has the most gold per hour at the end. If/when I start this it will most likely be in May.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

The Crossrealm

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:33:00 +0000

This is just a quick post to let you know (if you didn't already) that this weekend I was a guest on Episode 8 of The Crossrealm Podcast with Profitz from WowProfitz. The podcast episode can be found here. The volume is a bit low, but turn up your volume and enjoy!

Cheers,
Phat Lewts
If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Market Manipulation: Drunken Mogul Style

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:28:00 +0000

Today's post is a guest post written by GoblinRaset the author of the WoW gold making blog The Drunken Mogul. Be sure to check out his blog when you're done reading his post, there's more great information where this came from!

Today we are going to discuss how to manipulate some markets, via creating a floor for mat prices and creating a ceiling for the crafted items. Also, quick warning this post will involve some maths, so stick with me and hopefully it will all make sense. Now, on with the maths.

Creating mat price floor:

First, before we can create a floor price for mats, we must determine our price ceiling for mats. Meaning, we figure out, 'What is the maximum price I am happy/willing to pay for a given mat?'. In order to do this we must consult some resources and use our own personal knowledge of the markets to find this magic number. For doing this I like to use theunderminejournal.com and wowuction.com, for getting a general sense of how these items are/have been priced for not just my server but for the region/faction.

*For the purposes of this discussion we will be using LW profession as an example due to it's simplistic material needs/structure, and will be using random numbers just to illustrate points.*

Let's take Leatherworking first, so the basic mats for the top level LW are: Exotic Leather, Prismatic Scales, and Magnificent Hide. So, using the different resources available to us, let's value Exotic leather/Prismatic Scales at 5g/ea or 100g/stack, and this would make Magnificent Hides value at 250g (since it takes 50 Exotic Leather per 1 Magnificent Hide, 50x5=250). So, now that we have set our price ceiling, we need to make sure that our competition can not buy materials for this price or lower. We do this by setting up a dealfinding list in TSM, in combination with the app or using TUJ/WoWuction to notify us when they are priced accordingly, and setting the max price to the prices above. Then whenever the prices fall below or at the max price we set we buy them up as soon as possible.

What this accomplishes is that our actual cost of materials (the average that we buy it at) is actually below our max price, and our competition's costs are all above our max price. Now while it may not be a big difference in costs, in the long run a difference of 50s-1g per leather when buying thousands of leather means the difference in thousands of gold.

*Note; these tactics do not protect against dumb people, but as long as everything is setup correctly you should never lose money.*

Setting the ceiling for crafted items:

Now we need to setup how much we will charge for the items we are crafting. So, in regards to LW for the purposes of this discussion we are going to use the crafted dreadful set. For the crafted dreadful sets we basically have two groups of items that we can craft, those that require 1 Magnificent Hide(referred now to 1x), and those that require 2 (referred now as 2x). Since, our cost for Magnificent Hide is only 250g, we would want to set the threshold to something 25-50% higher, so somewhere between 300-375g (for 1x), and 650-750g (for 2x). but this is not our ceiling, this is just the least amount we are will to sell this item at, and the purpose of this discussion is to set a ceiling to help keep/maintain the prices of the items being posted.

So, for figuring out where to set the ceiling, I like to set it somewhere between 100-500% of the crafting cost. Which, for the purposes of this discussion, would be 500-1500g (for 1x), and 1k-3k(for 2x). This works in such a way as that, when the crafted items drop in price to a price you are not willing to sell at, you post them at the fallback and allow the market to reset itself. Or, if the prices drop drastically you can use this information to make an informed decision about buying the item to flip (due to it being cheaper than mat costs), or just to help groom(as I like to call it)/maintain the market value of the items you are crafting.

Using this system will likely breed competition due to the fact that the markets for these items are now looking profitable, but hopefully with this system it will teach them the true value of the items and not have the mentality of "Hey I farmed these mats, so as long as I get something for these items I'm happy". And don't be afraid to apply this strategy to other markets.

In closing, I hope this system that I employ to great success works for you as well. Also, I would like to thank @PhatlewtsGold, for allowing me to do a guest post for his site, as he has been a great supporter of mine and my blog: The Drunken Mogul.

Thanks,

GoblinRaset

The Drunken Mogul

Phat's Weekly Review 4/17

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:25:00 +0000

Before I start I just want to give a quick shout out to Jim from Power Word: Gold for being such a good sport about my last post. Just to clarify for some readers, there's no bad blood between us, Jim is one of the reasons I'm in gold making to begin with, I just disagreed with his article and wrote a counter argument. Now for the review!

Overview
This week I'm up to 2.33 million in liquid gold, an increase of 52k over last week. Not the best I've ever done, but take a look at my Weekly TSM Summary:

I spent 58k this week, which I'm glad to see. My problem is (I think at least) that I'm not processing the mass of Ghost Iron Bars that I've been investing in recently. I've been getting them for the price of ore, so roughly half their mat cost. I don't ask why, spoke with the guy last night and he said he enjoys farming, well hey, I enjoy not farming so we're a good fit! Now I just need to convince my Blacksmith to set up TSM...that's a whole other project.

Organized Gem Lists
This week I've finally organized my cut rare gem Auctioning Groups in TSM by common search terms to optimize the scanning process. I originally did this to give to you guys in a post, but then realized that it might not be the easiest or worthwhile thing to import, I'd have to post 7 lists of which you'd have to import individually, then a final grouping for overall settings...yikes. I'm toying with the idea of posting it anyway, just for those of you who want it. If you'd like it (or not), let me know in the comments, just trying to gauge how useful it'd be to the community before I spend an hour or two putting instructions together.

Back to Stock
Minus my Blacksmithing, I was able to effectively catch up on all my menial crafting duties; my crafts from JC, Tailoring, Enchanting, Engineering, and Inscription all got restocked this week, and it should make for a relatively stress free week next week, as far as crafting goes, so that leads me to hoping that I definitely will get my BS crafting set up next week, for optimal AH control. I've been doing the CDs semi-regularly, so I have over 20 new patterns, it's time to put them to work!!

Stacked Diamonds
Having gone a little wild crafting Primal Diamonds, I had over a full stack in my inventory last night. Usually I sell 4, 1 at a time for ~600g, and then get undercut after a while etc. I decided to try and sell a 20 stack for 575g a piece, and within 12 hours, I had 11,500 g in my mailbox, still at about 100% profit over mats! Going to try to do this some more over the week, and see how it effects the market. My server is pretty small, so it could easily become oversaturated if I keep doing it, but I'll let you know how it goes next week.

I'll leave you with my favorite sales of the week:

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

"Proof of Jeweled Onyx Panther Duping"

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:58:00 +0000

It's only been 7 months since Jim did his last post using The Undermine Journal graphs as "evidence" for duping, and he's done it again. First let me start by linking you to my response from his previous claim, well worth the read, one of my favorite posts I've ever written.

"Proof"
Now I will not be playing the role of a Blizzard fanboy and say these items are not being duplicated, I very much think they are. I just believe that Jim's argument is not compelling, and I know that I definitely would not want him to be my lawyer based on his definition of proof. All he provides is circumstantial evidence at best, while throwing the word proof around as if it's meaningless.

The Undermine Journal
Jim uses graphs from TUJ to highlight a part of his argument. Below is the graph of the Jeweled Onyx Panther in question:

His point is that the EU one has some strange fluctuations within a time period. This is true, the price hovers around 70k during the time in question, and taking the base cost as being at least 18k (price of Orb with discount) times 4, 76k should be the bare minimum that one could theoretically "pay" to craft one taking all other mats to be negligible (we wouldn't, but others do). The graph does even dip into the 65k zone for a while, so fair enough, decent evidence. Calling this proof however, does not take into consideration 5 possibilities:

Blingtron 4000 has a chance to drop this, significantly lowering crafting price.
Someone transferring servers could use these to retain some of their gold without transferring a bank.

This saves IRL money for gold.

Over saturation and slow sales could lead crafters to panic and try to dump their bad investments.
Seeing dupers sell them for so cheap could make people panic, listing theirs low.
Finally, accounts of people purchasing from dupers say they could not list the items on the AH:

There's much more you can read about the last, and most important point, but if none of these factors existed, there'd be some pretty solid proof for the aforementioned argument, as is though, it's just evidence of a theory, and a shoddy one at that. Cheap Panthers do not imply duping.

Also if dupers had a method that worked on the EU servers, it would most certainly work on the US servers, and why wouldn't they capitalize to make the most $$$ before the method gets fixed? "I don't know" was the response, so again evidence vs. proof.

So you like TUJ Graphs?

Here's one, Jade Spirit:

Would anyone like to suggest those US spikes imply a dupe? The supply doubled in a month though, and it's cheaper than mats on my server! So what? The graph of Dancing Steel also shows the same "abnormal pattern" in the US as above, but again, we know, this item has not been duped. Just because we don't understand why certain fluctuations occur, does not mean it's because of duping.

Closing

In closing I'd like to use my point from last time to really drive this home. The Crimson Deathcharger, a well known duplicated item, in the period of one month, in which Jim claims a "doubling" on only EU servers indicated proof of a dupe, the number on the Auction House went up 900% on the US servers, and over 300% on the EU servers, much more than this "proven" dupe.

So, in closing:

Are these items being duped? Yes.

Does Jim use the word proof correctly? No.

Is Blizzard denying this like there's no tomorrow? You bet they are!!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Finding Suppliers

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:39:00 +0000

Lately I've been spending time in WoWProfitz's IRC Channel, and a frequent user, GoblinRaset suggested I do a post on how I find suppliers who farm herbs/ore, and I thought it would be a great topic! Also, he just started a gold blog called The Drunken Mogul, and he's already got some great posts, be sure to check it out! Also, feel free to join us in IRC!

Getting Suppliers
What I've been doing myself is pretty simple, and something that you might do when you're sitting in trade. Usually when I'm sitting in /2 it's because I'm reposting gear from my transmog toon, and once in a while (especially during primetime) I'll see someone selling GIO for a ridiculously low price, and I'll send them a tell saying I'll buy everything they have. This is usually what sparks their attention. You made their lives easier because:

You bought their item quick
You bought it all

This instant gratification is what the "human"* farmer wants. He just spent an hour farming, he wants to see the fruits of his labor. He likes you. You like him. Why not just ask him to make this a long term thing?

*Note: Just because you're interacting with a human who speaks good English, doesn't mean they're not using a bot to farm for them.

Hook, Line and...

Now that you've caught the seller's attention, and purchased all his goods, now seal the deal. Let him know that if he wants to keep sending you goods COD that you'll gladly buy all he can farm at his mentioned price. This is an important part, and not to be neglected. Let him know you have the power to afford any amount he can farm. On top of that you can mention the added bonus of not having to pay AH fees ever using COD, and ensure him that you check your mail often. Not everyone will go for it, but why wouldn't you try? Saving gold is making gold.

Other Methods
You can always use TUJ to see who the largest suppliers to the Auction House are, and see if you can strike a deal with them. These people tend to not care about the time the ore sits on the AH, so they might be harder to convince to cut a deal with, but it's worth a shot!

Shout Outs
Last but not least I want to give some shout-outs to the other 2 new gold bloggers I talk with from Profitz's IRC who recently started blogs, Tharius', who just started writing Tharius' Creative Accounting, and Erogroth, who has written on PWG's Hatchery, as well as been featured on the PW:G podcast, and has started his own blog called Get Rich WoW. I've added all these blogs to my blogroll, and they already have some great content churning, be sure to check them out!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Phat's Weekly Review: 4/9

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:11:00 +0000

This week has been an odd one. I invested a lot this week, and for the first time in 2 months I've made less than 50k in a week, coming in at +27k overall this week.

Heavy Investing
This week I invested. A lot.

As you can see, this week I have over 80k invested. I sank about 20k into the Springstrider mounts, which I think I will start posting around June, when players come back who don't normally play during the school year. I figure I might as well invest my gold in some long term prospects, rather than having it sit in my pockets doing nothing for me!

I also bought over 200 Golden Lotus this week because Transmuting the rare gems was cheaper than prospecting them from the ore, and I really needed to restock. I also purchased a ton of Black and White Trillium Ore because it was well below market average for my server. Quite frankly, I'd rather have my entire 2 million tied up in things making money than have the 2 million liquid, but it's pretty hard to do, as there are only so many auctions on my small server, and only so many hours in a day!

Alliance Updates
Just figured since I have not much this week I'll update you on the progress of my Alliance alt. In my post "So That's Competition?" I wrote about someone disgruntled with my transmog pricing who vouched to become my competition, only to not quite fully understand what I was doing. Well I must say they have stepped up their game since then. Definitely did a few google searches, and most definitely using TSM to do searches, although I don't think they're using my lists (but oh how I would appreciate the irony). They're buying more transmog gear, and I've come to find out they're actually the Alliance version of me, dabbling in multiple markets across the server. I still have quite an edge on them as far as inventory, and they're not posting below my lower threshold, so we'll see what happens.

That's about all for my weekly review, if you made more gold than I did this week, be sure to rub it in my face in the comments to motivate me for next week!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Primordial Saronite

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:24:00 +0000

This is a post for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival, which will be live on the 11th of this month. The topic is: "Name one of your historically profitable markets that is now defunct and what can we learn from that old market." Be sure to check his site on the 11th for other great entries!

The Primordial Saronite market is one that I dealt exclusively in during my ICC days when I was selling gold. Those days are past me but it taught me a valuable tool, of optimizing unneeded "badges" for surplus income.

Crafting Material
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Primordial Saronite, it was a crafting material used to craft high end epics during ICC, and was available for purchase for Emblem of Frost. These are equivalent to your modern day Valor, and had a cap as to weekly limit, but I wasn't going to let that stop me! I had 3 Max level characters whom I'd grind out maximum dungeon cap on Emblems daily to buy as many of these as possible. I'd then turn and sell these on the AH (they were quite the hot commodity), and then do less virtuous things with the gold than Blizzard would have liked, but again you can read more about that in my earlier post.

What Can We Learn?
Waste not. If you have those extra Justice laying around from hitting valor cap, put them to work! I currently use them to buy WotLK epic gems in Dalaran, to cut and sell on the AH to 70 and 80 twinks. For my server it's the best option, and I'd say that on most servers it's the way to go, but there are always other options you can factor in. I of course went for all the leveling BoAs I needed first, as leveling alts is really the best investment for long term gold making. Now that I have more or less all the BoAs I need, I buy the epic gems, and cut them for roughly 1g 36s per Justice Point, selling the cut gems at ~300g. Of course YMMV. As with any other market, diversify your cuts, and you will make more sales.

What is your favorite now defunct market? I really enjoyed Cold's post for his carnival, he wrote about a market that I very much enjoyed first starting out in WoW as a novice gold maker, I highly suggest checking it out!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Market Manipulation

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:13:00 +0000

The topic this week was sent in for last week's post, but I had a busy week, and didn't feel as if I'd have adequate time to address the subject with the time I had to write it so I put it off until this week. If you're interested in submitting a topic for next week's Reader Request Phriday, click here.

This week's topic was sent in by Brent99. He's currently at ~4 million gold, and has been playing WoW since a year after it's release. He suggested the topic of Market Manipulation, because he said he rarely sees bloggers address the topic of purchasing, and I agree, so without further ado,

Market Manipulation
First of all I'm going to define what market manipulation is, by doing something that is sure to make any English teacher cringe, quoting Wikipedia. Market manipulation is

"Transactions which create an artificial price or maintain an artificial price for a tradeable security."

As you can see we do this pretty often in WoW in order to make gold, and many of our practices are based in this principle, which is illegal in the United States. Thankfully, you won't have Hellscream or Wrynn breathing down your neck when you manipulate markets in the World of Warcraft, just glimmering piles of gold.

Buying
Since it was one of the subtopics that Brent99 suggested, I'm going to start with purchasing. I'm going to use an example here, but this can be applied to basically any market involving craftables. Golden Lotus are a useful commodity for a Transmute Alchemist, and I constantly monitor the price of these herbs. On my server (which is on the high side) the average price for one is about 84g. The price usually hovers anywhere from 70-120g per, and I try to buy on the 70g end, to end up making a hefty hunk of profit in Primal Diamonds. When I look on my auction house and see something like this:

I'll gladly purchase everything up to the 83g stacks, to purchase (on average) below the market average, as well as drive prices up for my competitors to above market average by 15g per, or in this case roughly 20%.

Doing this ensures me that my competitors will have to purchase at higher prices until the market eventually lowers, making their costs higher than mine, and them more likely to post at prices profitable to me. Of course you can never stop the "I farmed the mats so they're free, so any price I sell at is a profit" guy, but that's just an inherant aspect of the craftables market. Buying when supply is high and prices are low (weekends for example) is the best way to stock up at low prices, keeping your costs low. Then you'll have mats to craft through the rest of the week. You never want to buy mats when you need them, because that forces current market prices from you. Always buy low to ensure your profitability and protect yourself from inevitable fluctuations in the prices of mats.

Always know the general fluctuations in prices of materials. Use The Undermine Journal to check historic prices of materials or items you are looking to invest in if you're new to the market. Doing research and understanding regular price fluctuations can help you save thousands upon thousands of gold in the long term, so it is indeed worth the time.

Tranmog and Twink Gear
This goes along with another topic that was suggested for this week's Reader Request Phriday, a question submitted by Arctic, asking what markets were still viable in 5.2, the answer being all of them. Here are some relevant links to my Twink and Transmog methods, and in my opinion these markets will never die. There will always be a demand for leveling greens and blues with high stat distributions, as long as there are levelers to purchase them. These markets are NOT high turnover markets though, don't expect to make back your initial investment overnight. I sell maybe 3-4 pieces per day on average, but at the markups you sell them at, it's a great opportunity to make gold.

By the definition above, buying and reselling twink and transmog gear is a prime example of market manipulation. If the stats were mediocre, and none of us were doing this, prices would probably hover around 30-50g per. Since we are, we're effectively raising the price ~900%, and attempting to hold a monopoly on the market, in order to control the prices. It's a very fun game to play and can be quite beneficial to the seller. When people complain in trade chat, be sure to remind them that it might have sold for enchanting mats at a lower price, and that they really should thank you for keeping the gear on the market this long for them, paying the deposits when you had to relist it.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review: 4/3

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:48:00 +0000

This week was a pretty laid back one for me. After last week, pushing to hit 2 million, I had a busy weekend, and I haven't been keeping up on my crafting. I might keep with this pattern, I'm in a gold making sort of slump, not particularly interested in pushing my goldmaking to the utmost limit right now, I'd rather catch up on other things in game. All that aside, I still made over 125k this week, up to a total of 2,253,665g, a great spot considering the lack of effort!

Return of Glyph Competition
This week took an interesting turn when a familiar (but long inactive) face came back to my glyph market. A sight of exasperation was let out when I saw they were back. They are one of the folks who will camp the AH to no end, and before their return, the glyph market had been less and less cutthroat (post and leave it) for a while, but I expect that to change if they're back for good. This means one of two things: either I'm going to give up glyphs all together, or I'm going to cross my fingers and hope they're only back for the 1 week free trial.

Blog Updates

Last week's lack of Reader Request Phriday post because I didn't get any submissions, quite the contrary really, I got some great prompts, but I did not have the time that I thought necessary to properly address each topic. This next week my hectic schedule is going to continue, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to update as often as I have been, but I'll try to get some interesting content out there for you guys to chew on.

"Community" Issues
Over the last week a lot has been thrown back and forth about the WoW gold making community, and I really don't have much to add to the discussion so I've mainly stayed out of it, but for those who are interested, Zerohour put out a really great article that sums it up beautifully, for those who are interested.

Holiday Fun
This week I've decided to partake in the Noblegarden festivities, and have completed all the sub achievements for the meta achievement, meaning I only have one left. Unfortunately the true reason I don't have this achievement is because I really hate Midsummer Festival, and I avoid partaking at all costs. Unfortunately it can no longer be avoided.

Also in case you haven't noticed they buffed the spawn rate for the eggs, most likely because of easily avoidable, but unchecked CRZ issues.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Blacksmithing Guide to Lightning Steel Ingot

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:40:00 +0000

If you haven't realized already, Phase 4 has opened on the Isle of Thunder, and the mob that drops the pattern for the new Blacksmith daily cooldown Lightning Steel Ingot, Itoka, is now spawning. This post will summarize all you need to know about it!

Daily Cooldown
Lightning Steel Ingot are made by a cooldown also named Lightning Steel Ingot, which requires 10x Ghost Iron Bar, and has a research aspect. With the research you can learn a plethora of new patterns, such as the Crafted Dreadful sets and the 522 patterns that require Haunting Spirit from Throne of Thunder.

Crafting with Lightning Steel
Lightning Steel is actually only used in a grand total of 18 patterns. The first 6 you get when first completing the chain from killing Itoka. Each of these "Phase 1", ilvl 463 weapons are then used as a reagent in crafting "Phase 2" weapons, epics of ilvl 476. From there, those Phase 2 items are used as reagents in crafting ilvl 502 (raid finder) weapons, that have item models of old no longer obtainable weapons for potential transmogging.

Phase 1
Phase 1 requires 5 Lightning Steel Ingot, 3 Spirit of Harmony, and 2-3 Living Steel. All these patterns are learned initially when doing the quest from Itoka. All phase weapons are BoE (see chart below for links), and are required as a reagent, and also unlock the patterns for the Phase 2 weapons.

Phase 2
You learn the recipe for all Phase 2 weapons by crafting their Phase 1 counterparts. Mats are 10 Lightning Steel Ingot, 6 Spirit of Harmony, and 4 or 6 Living Steel.

Phase 3
You learn the recipe for all Phase 3 weapons by crafting their Phase 2 counterparts. Mats are 15 Lightning Steel Ingot, 9 Spirit of Harmony, and 6 or 9 Living Steel.

As you can see the mats to craft an ilvl 502 weapon are astronomical, so there will probably be a limited market for these, at the price they'd go for. The chart below summarizes the evolution models with Wowhead links. Phase 3 is not on Wowhead yet, so they are battle.net links.

L.S. P1	Phase 1 Version (ilvl 463)	L.S. P2	Phase 2 Version (ilvl 476)	L.S. P3	Phase 3 Version (ilvl 502)
2	The Planar Edge, Reborn	4	Black Planar Edge, Reborn	6	Wicked Edge of the Planes, Reborn
2	Drakefist Hammer, Reborn	6	Dragonmaw, Reborn	6	Dragonstrike, Reborn
2	Fireguard, Reborn	4	Blazeguard, Reborn	6	Blazefury, Reborn
3	Thunder, Reborn	4	Deep Thunder, Reborn	9	Stormherald, Reborn
3	Lunar Crescent, Reborn	6	Mooncleaver, Reborn	9	Bloodmoon, Reborn
3	Lionheart Blade, Reborn	6	Lionheart Champion, Reborn	9	Lionheart Executioner, Reborn

Finally, for your viewing pleasure, the evolution of the models via their battle.net pictures (Click to enlarge).

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 3/27: Multimillionaire Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:38:00 +0000

If you read my weekly review from last week you'll know I ended up about 30k shy of 2 million gold, at 1,968,760g. Well this week I surpassed the 2 million marker and more. I'm up to a grand total of 2,127,034g! I am officially a multimillionaire!

I am also up over 150k, so I've made over 20k per day the past week, much better than last week.

Posting
I had a posting rut the previous week, but I got out of that this week, and was up to date with all my crafting. It was really nice to sit back and post after crafting everything I needed the previous week, like sitting on a beach with a cool drink in my hand. It's been a zen week, but I need to get back into the buying scheme

Sour Deal
I think I've mentioned in previous posts that I've gotten a supplier of GIO, and this week I got an in game mail out of the blue, from a new toon, claiming they were my supplier, saying that their original account got banned (I didn't ask questions), but that the 90 they were mailing me from had herb/mining, and would gladly farm for me, but they didn't have flying, and wanted 10k up front. I checked out the old toons, and his story checked out, neither had logged for a few days, and this one had mining/herbalism, and being that this guy has given me so much ore in the past I obliged and sent the 10k. The next day I got 48 stacks of GIO in the mail, a nice down payment, but since then (about 4 days now), I have not gotten a single piece. So right now I've payed an average of 208g/stack, and I'm not too pleased. The toon hasn't been on in 24 hours, but hopefully next week I'll be telling you how it wasn't a bad investment.

Lightning Steel
The long awaited legitimate entry of the Lightning Steel CD came yesterday, and WOW for the "second stage" xmog weapons, it's going to take 2 weeks of daily CDs. Another 2 weeks for "stage 3". Yikes! I'm going to have to really show some self restraint and not use it for myself!

Thoughts on 2 Million
Hitting 2 million has been my goal since I bought Invincible a while back, trying not to make any extravagant purchases since then, and in that aspect I've been successful. I've had up weeks and down weeks, but overall I've made a truckload of gold in the past 2 months, and I'm on track for tons of gold in the months to come! My new long term goal is a tough one, not really sure what to be, 3 mill doesn't seem all too interesting, and 5 seems too far off, but only time will tell!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Reader Request Phriday: New Markets

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 19:36:00 +0000

If you're interested in submitting a topic for next week's Reader Request Phriday post, please click here for more info!

Since they were the only one who responded this week, once again our question comes from Leeu, who is currently sitting on 80k, through Ghost Iron Ore shuffling, and flipping. Leeu asked if there were any other markets that they could break into without leveling more 80+'s.

Jewelcrafting Sub-markets
Since you have what you need to do the shuffle, you may want to look into other profitable Jewelcrafting sub-markets. My favorite is Wrath Epic Gems, this is a great method to make gold, and is a great submarket. In addition to what's in the post I linked, you can add Nightmare Tear's to the list, YMMV.

On top of that a hot topic that I keep hearing from both Elvine and Profitz is disenchanting Tin Ore to get the leveling gems for JC to sell raw on the AH (think Moss Agate etc.). I don't use this method personally, but it comes from two reliable sources, with many behind them backing it up.

New Tabs!
It's funny that Leeu ended up asking this question, because I had already been writing a post I was going to come out with today, and it coincides well with this question. Yesterday someone asked me a question and I wanted to link them to one of my past posts for more info, and I found that going through my blog to find some useful information can be tedious. To that extent, I've compiled a list of my still-relevant past posts, and put it under a Gold Making Ideas tab in the top bar of my blog. I organized the post subjects the best I could, but if you're ever looking for some inspiration, or a new market to dive into, this will hopefully be an invaluable resource. So go check it out and dive into some new markets!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Phat's Weekly Review 3/21

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:05:00 +0000

If you are interested in submitting a topic for this week's Reader Request Phriday post, feel free to send one in ASAP, I still don't have a topic yet!

This week has been painfully slow for me gold making wise. My numbers are based on an 8 day week (numbers from yesterday). My new gold total is 1,968,760g for an 8 day increase of only 62,800g, dismally low considering that I made twice that in only 6 days last week.

Excuses
So here is the section where I list all my excuses, but honestly, this week's lack of income can be attributed to laziness. I make about 5k/day selling glyphs, and I only posted them twice this week. Shame on me. On top of that I did not play much this weekend due to St. Patrick's Day festivities. All is good though, I'm on track to hit 2 million by Friday (hopefully)

Semi-Productivity
This week I did manage to prospect and cut 250 stacks of GIO that I had been putting off for a while. I actually ran out of a few cuts, which is when I knew I had to do something about it. On top of that I DE'd all the resulting rings/necks for enchanting mats and crafted scrolls, I shuffled this week more than I have in the past month, which is promising for me actually hitting my 2 million mark some time in the very near future. My realm's market value is 3.6 million. Considering my transmog seller controls about 1.2 million of that, and my gems/glyphs/enchants account four another .5 million, and I have 2 TCG mounts that add up to .3 million, I can buy out my server's auction house today. Fun facts.

TSM Application
Sapu, Lead Developer of TSM, linked to some interesting stats this week about the TSM App on twitter. Quick aside for those of you who don't use it: the TSMApp is a free application that updates your scan data every hour so you never have to scan the AH in-game. The stats can be found here. The stats are from people currently running the app, and in order they are the current version everyone is using, followed by the number of realms that people have set up for each individual tab. Just thought some of you might find it interesting. Also you all should follow Sapu on Twitter, as well TSM's twitter page. Be up to date on your favorite addon! I hope you all had a more product

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Improving Gold Making Efficiency

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:48:00 +0000

If you're like me, you have your gold making machine up and running, and you're churning out lots of items, using TSM as well as you ever will, but your whole operation is getting a bit disorganized. Every once in a while it's good to take a step back from your operation and checking to see where you can fine tune things. I of course took the realm maintenance to draft my ideas, and I figured I'd share my battle plans

Bank Alt
I've been putting off dealing with this problem for a while, but I have so many items posted from my bank alt every 2 days that I'm going to have to deal with it. I'm looking for the most efficient ways to do so, and here's what I've come up with for the time being. As a note I post items by Item ID, aka ignoring suffixes.

Twink Gear

Have TSM post (at most) 3 of each item (down from 6)
After posting, go through extras (by hand and with comparing to suffixes posted) and send off worst stats to Enchanter for DEing
Keep all extra blues in Guild Bank

Twink gear has some of the highest posting costs from my toon (especially in comparison to the low level transmog gear), so I want to eliminate as many superfluous auctions as possible.

Transmog Gear

Have TSM post (at most) 2 of each item (down from 4), except high tiers.
After posting send off all extras to Enchanter for DEing (easier than with twink gear because stats dont matter)

This should (roughly) eliminate about 40-50% of my stock, and save me ~15-20 minutes per posting (every 2 days). Hopefully it will both save me time and help organize my auctions. What do you do every so often to increase your efficiency in gold making?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

So that's Competition?

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 19:50:00 +0000

A character who was sending me transmog hate mail, has now committed themselves to being my competitor. It's been an interesting chain of events, and a story I thought would be worth telling, this is a blog after all. I hope you enjoy it and consider contributing to the discussion.

Alli Side
First a little background. I play mainly on the Horde side of my server. I have a 25 guild and all my crafting characters Horde side, but I wanted to dabble in the Alliance auction house, and have made over 100k there by flipping items in two markets - Twink and Transmog.

The Letters
So being that I flip transmog, I of course get the occasional hate mail. My general policy is this: If you take the time and ask me for a deal on the piece of gear, and do it in a polite way, I'll be more than happy to cut you some sort of deal. On the other hand if you're rude and/or condescending, I just won't respond to the mail. So the first mail went something like this, I really wish I kept them so I could just Screenshot them.

"Hi, the cloth gloves you have on the AH are way overpriced, only an idiot would sell them for that much. I'll give you 50g for them, you should be happy to get that."

As is my policy (above) I just ignored it, but this person really wanted the gloves. A few days later I got the following:

"I see those gloves haven't sold yet. 50g is a great offer and the most you'll ever get"

Well at the very least he is persistent. Again, I ignored it and went about my business. Wouldn't you know it, 3 days later:

"I don't know why you won't sell me those gloves, they're not worth that much. You probably don't make any gold with your ridiculously overpriced auctions."

I considered putting him on ignore, but I decided to respond. I sent him a mail with the following: "Since you want them so badly, I've decided to reevaluate my pricing model." I then proceeded to list the item at gold cap. I got a few other mails followed, but I put his toon on ignore, and kept listing my auctions as per usual.

Out of the Blue
Randomly, about 2 weeks later I get a mail from a character with (phonetically) the same name as this guy. The title was "Hurry Up" and read something as follows:

"Hurry up and finish posting so I can undercut you!"

Okay, you caught my attention now. Did he just figure out the transmog market and is trying to beat me at my own game? Naturally I looked up this toon on The Undermine Journal and had a good laugh at the results. He was selling a decent amount of gear, but maybe only 1/50 items I actually recognized as transmog gear. So what he thought I was doing is just buying up all the greens and relisting at absurd prices for my own entertainment and profit. This struck me as a bit of culture shock, but it provided some keen insight into why transmog toons are particularly infamous on servers, because they are assumed to be big jerks by those not "in the know" of the market. Heck, even people "in the know" might just dislike them as well. Hope you enjoyed this, and if you have any stories you'd like to share please do so in the comments!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 3/12

noreply@blogger.com (Phat Lewts) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:55:00 +0000

If you're interested in submitting a topic for this week's Reader Request Phriday, make sure to have it in by Thursday afternoon at the latest!

I'm doing my weekly review today because I will be unavailable all day tomorrow, but normal Wednesday weekly reviews will resume next week. In the past 6 days I am up over 133k gold. That's over 20k a day, which are some nice post-patch numbers, at least on my server!

Glyph Mania
I really wish I could say I owe a lot of this to the patch, and gems/enchants all selling well, but in the past 6 days I've made 35k g in glyphs alone. Now I'm on a small-mid pop server, and there are a few major players in the glyph market, but none of them showed up this week! I was able to post lots of glyphs at fallback, and raked in quite a bit of gold because of it.

Transmog/Twink
I've been using my method for Twink gear almost daily now (used to only repost every 48 hrs), and now I'm seeing some nice results every day. I like shying away from the useless gear, and having it rot on the AH, keeps prices low. My inventory has already been paid for by the gold I've made, but I'm getting quite a few of each item on backlog, and may start to disenchant some of them.

Patch Profits
I must add to all of this that the patch has been treating me well. Gem sales are through the roof, and Ghost Iron prices are right where they were pre-patch. I was hoping for a little more of a dump, with some low prices, but haven't seen it on my relatively small server, but I hope some of you are able to reap the benefits of the Great Specualtion of 5.2. I was up a lot this week, especially considering I was focusing less on my gold making and more on the new content. I'm pleased with the results. How have patch 5.2 sales gone for you thusfar?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!