Importance of Buying Mats

Once you really know what you're doing, have a business set up, have every profession in the game, and are crafting hundreds of items a week you still can run into problems. The most challenging part of moving towards becoming a millionaire is managing all the crap that crosses over into multiple professions. Just look at saronite ore... if you run out then you will most likely lose the ability to craft the majority of items in enchanting, blacksmithing and jewelcrafting. That's a major item, but what about things like eternals or adder's tongues? Everything matters and so you have to set up some kind of ellaborate snatch list and buy every single time the items appear. If you don't and you have a week or two of good sales then you are going to completely run out of materials.

Trust me, it happens constantly and I am the same person who can pull in 30-60k gold in a single week! Just think about an entire guild bank of titanium ore, and then think about prospecting all of it and selling the resulting goods in two weeks. Now imagine buying items of all types whenever they reach certain thresholds. That's how I end up spending 50-75% of what I earn every day reinvesting and keeping my stockpiles ahead of my sales. I'm on a small server... I feel sorry for those doing this strategy on a big one!

Rule #1 of reaching one million gold in wow: don't ever stop buying; don't ever assume you will have enough mats. That's the moment you will run out and scratch your head wondering where it all went!

14 comments: on "Importance of Buying Mats"

  1. tldr:

    buy mats or your wont have any :P

  2. Saronite Ore for enchanting? Did you mean Engineering?

  3. I won't deny buying mats is important Markco, but they shouldn't be bought just at ANY cost. In some cases, farming mats can be just as wise a decision.
    I'm a big fan of limiting expenses and sell for "normal" prices, rather then asking insane prices because I'd like a normal profitmargin.

  4. ...I think you're on my brainwave...

    I had a good stock of Cardinals, was snatching them at a ceiling of 150g, until a couple days ago, when the raw market got bought out and the cut market skyrocketed to 250-275g for the cheap ones. I missed out on a really good cycle on my AH because of not planning ahead and I ran out yesterday, could only get the couple from my alchemists. Take note guys! Takes money to make money!

  5. Kind of unrelated to your post, but I was curious on your thoughts about guild perks?
    How do you think some of the gold / profession bonuses will affect the economy / money market community?

  6. Buillon you can craft rings from the uncommon gems for disenchanting purposes. It is my primary source for infinite dust.

    Izzie, those kinds of off-topic questions will get better attention on the jmtc forums, facebook or twitter. No worries though, I would say that guild perks look amazing for gold makers. You will definitley want to get into a large guild to get these perks or create your own for bankers. You'll need to play other aspects of the game though to level the guild. The perks will give huge advantages to auctioneers who have them over those who do not.

  7. While this is a good point (as I have recently found myself out of both saronite and cobalt bars/ore), at what point do you find yourself behind the 8-ball? With RS out now long enough to see 1. The guilds that can, kill it and get all they need, or 2. the pugs realize that it's too much of a headache, it seems that some servers are hitting a plateau in the form of enchants, gems, and in my case, even leveling tank gear (one of my big staples) has gone from 4-5 sets of cobalt and tempered gear a week, to 1-2.

    I wonder at what point Marcko, you will slow buying to avoid getting caught with your pants down on obsolete mats.

    I mean, with over a million gold, even a GBank tab full of titanium ore is still a small percentage of your total picture, but for the mid to high levels (me for example, working towards 125k) I am really trying to see when the curve is going to start heading the other direction.

    Off point, to counter this, I have developed snach and QA auctions to buying old world mats (now) that simply generates income from buying partial stack s of ore herbs, and reselling at AH norms.

  8. I really agree.

    However, WotLK was my first transition and I did a HORRIBLE job. Prices crashed much sooner than I was expecting. And the ones that were used for leveling are now worth more now than then. Double Stupid.

    E.g.: Eternal Shadow has gone from 40g/stack to 350g per stack. But how long till Starcraft and Cataclysm cause the crash?

  9. Anonymous said...
    "I won't deny buying mats is important Markco, but they shouldn't be bought just at ANY cost. In some cases, farming mats can be just as wise a decision.
    I'm a big fan of limiting expenses and sell for "normal" prices, rather then asking insane prices because I'd like a normal profitmargin."

    If you have to farm your mats to limit your expenses your generally better simply selling the mats. If you have to farm to make a profit, it's not worth doing.

    On the main topic though a little concept i uses is a floating, self regulating price list for mats.
    As i get a larger stock of mats building up i tend to lower my buy price gradually so that i still keep buying at the cheaper end but don't totally flood myself and as my stocks start to go down i gradually raise the buy price.

  10. Having mats coming out of your ears is a good thing in WoW. I currently have Saronite Ore coming out of my ears and to be honest, I like it that way. That means more enchanting mats, Titanium Bars (which then end up as Titansteel Bars), smithed goods and to be perfectly honest, something to keep me from being bored right out of my mind for an hour or two.

  11. This was the main reason why I used to have a hard time making gold. I used to only buy the mats needed at that time, and if the market didn't have any that day, then I wouldn't be able to craft.
    I'm still not using snatch, but I've been buying cheap mats when they come around.

  12. This is a very important point. Always having stock makes you very flexible in the market, and that gives you the greatest opportunity to make money in the market.

    I’m taking a break from wow right now, but several months ago when I had AH machine up and running one of the many mats I stocked were Eternal Airs. I had a transmute specced alchemist who would make metas with these, which I would cut and sell.

    At that time the price of eternal airs fluctuated a lot during the week. I would snatch cheap ones when it went down, and was actually able to turn around and sell them back to my competition in the gem market for a couple times what I paid on high volume days because they didn't stock up a head of time.

    Despite making much larger profit doing other things, it is still one of my proudest moments when I realized I could make money in one market off my competition from another market.

  13. So what do you do if you are getting low (or out) of mats. Yet the only items for sale wont give you much (or any profit). An example would be the last couple of days, I have just started digging in to the Netherweave Bag market on my realm. The problem is I just sold 40 bags in about 2 hours this evening and now completely out of mats. I literally cant keep up with the demand, and I also fear that the cloth prices will get higher if I decide to raise my snatch price.
    I'm loving the huge volume of sales, but I could easily empty out all the cloth for sale and the bags would be gone in a matter of hours.

    Also, saronite is currently 18g a stack and I am out of that also. I can't make a profit with that price (until I get my Enchanter and shuffle w/ rings/necks)

  14. Red uncommon gems can be cut into several 10 gold cuts and blue +stam can go for 10 gold as well. You might want to try shuffling even if you can't disenchant.

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